


Again, Forever

by DarlaBlack



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Season/Series 06, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 19:34:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack
Summary: Their second time. To seal the deal.





	Again, Forever

**Author's Note:**

> This might be considered something of a sequel to “Another Beautiful Saturday,” but you don’t need to have read that at all. Makes sense timeline-wise, though, and a few people asked about a follow-up.

Once, and they could call it a mistake. They could too easily blame tension and riled up emotions, and how it’s been too long for both of them. Twice would signal purpose. Intent.

Of course it hadn’t been a mistake. Those moments (such unbearable sweetness of his fingers in her hair and his body inside hers) had been waiting for them at the end of this long journey toward each other. It had been the end of the endless biding, and a heart-rending inauguration of some new stage. But it was only afterward that Mulder had realized how inevitable it had been, and he was anxious to cement his claim on their new future.  _This is us together. This is real_ , he kept thinking. He wanted her to know these things.

His fingers tapped on his desk in anticipation. She’d had almost an entire day without him to second guess, and he didn’t want there to be another minute of possible doubt. He would tell her with his eyes, and then tonight he would make sure she knew—they had done right. All of it was right.

She entered with some trepidation, he saw: a worrying of her lower lip, a nervous hand tucked behind her ear. Her shoulders pushed back against some non-existent weakness he might perceive in her.

“Hey,” he said to her, and he couldn’t help the softness of his eyes. I know those lips, he thought. I know that hair, how it falls over the pillow when she arches her back. The lightest flush of pink colored her cheeks.

“Good morning,” she said, and moved to her desk.

They worked tentatively around each other for a few hours, more careful than usual. No wild theories. No  _Mulder-you’re-crazys_. He wasn’t worried. They’d find their way back there, to eye-rolling and exasperation and subtle flirting, only it would be different this time because it would really be foreplay and afterward he would really get to touch her. He almost hummed, thinking about how all their small bickerings would pay off in the end.

Around noon, he stood and stretched. Without a word, he slipped a folded piece of paper onto her desk space, smiled at her, and ducked out the door. He hovered in the hallway, listening to the paper crinkle as it unfolded, and smiled again before moving on.

_Dear Dana Scully,_

_I am headed to the food court around the corner. Please come join me if you want. I wanted to tell you that I can see your summer freckles through your makeup, now that I know they’re there. I packed a change of clothes in my trunk because twenty-four hours already feels too long. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to drive you home, feed you, and make love to you at least twice before we have to work again. Your face when you come is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen._

_-FWM_

He knew he was ridiculous: he could be the stupidest sap when he finally sensed the flow of affection from another person. But he felt that she needed to know what he was thinking. She deserved that, after how he’d been this past year. When Fox Mulder put his mind to something, he did  _not_  skimp on the details, and he’d decided that this thing with Scully, he was going to do it right.

While he waited in line for sushi, she appeared beside him without a word, only a half-swallowed smile on her lips. There were agents and other feds crawling all over the place for lunch. Her fingers, though, brushed the back of his hand, and her eyes skated sidewaystoward him. He hooked his pinky around hers for the briefest of seconds. When the line moved forward, he touched her back and felt her breathe deeply. They ordered and he tried to pay, but she put her hand on his and shook her head. Her treat today—he had promised to feed her dinner. He smiled and nodded.

They ate at a small, round café table where their feet bumped frequently and their hands sometimes brushed and when she took a sip of her diet soda, he leaned forward to pretend to whisper something in her ear, but he kissed the soft shell of it instead. When he sat back, she was smiling. “Mulder,” she said, the barest hint of her old exasperation in her voice.

“Hmm.”

“How are we ever going to get any work done?”

The top of his foot bumped her ankle. “Ask me again tomorrow,” he said, and felt the heat of his own smile on his face.

—

He stopped to pick up their dinner on the drive back to her apartment: two kinds of pasta and a bottle of wine and even a large slice of tiramisu for their dessert. Scully swallowed hard and watched him settle the bag into the back seat. She couldn’t stop the fidgeting hands that betrayed her sense of unease.

She knew Fox Mulder as a dedicated man—when his mind was set, he would see anything through. She wondered, though, how far was through? Was he doing this right just so they might move on, so he could label the case of Dana Scully solved and then turn his attention to deeper mysteries? Did he just need to get it out of his system? He gave her a lopsided smile when he climbed back behind the wheel, which eased her fear slightly. He could be only himself, she realized, which meant that he was sometimes achingly sweet. For a time at least.

“I hope it’s okay,” he said.

“It smells good.”

He nodded, let his gaze linger on her for a moment longer, and then backed out of the space.

Over dinner he talked of various American water-based monsters and folkish legends that made her roll her eyes and laugh in relief while he tugged on her fingers and begged her to give his whimsy a chance. Only ever himself, she thought, and then she made his jaw drop when she told him about seeing a ghost with Melissa when she was twelve.

“I can’t believe you never told me,” he said, and she just shrugged with the slyest of smiles.

“You’ve plied me with wine, so I’ve told you a secret,” she said. “I don’t usually drink on a work night. Or any night, really.” She licked coffee flavored cream from the end of her fork while he watched.

“Scully, if you’ll tell me ghost stories, I’ll bring you wine every night of the week.”

She shook her head. “Not likely. But you can bring me dinner any time you want. Help me clean up?”

They were sudsing and wiping and drying and feeling the tension build when she turned to him with a dish towel in her hands, suddenly more awkward than usual around him. “Thank you for dinner,” she said.

He dried his hands and nodded, watching her closely. She felt the pressure of his gaze. “You okay?” He asked. He put a hand on her elbow, and she nodded.

“Yeah,” she said. “I just… Is this real, Mulder? I mean…” But what did she mean? That it wasn’t a game? That he wouldn’t get tired of it as soon as the next lead came along? That a certain brunette wouldn’t wander back in and take him away at any moment?

“Of course it’s real,” he told her. “Scully.” He stepped closer, reached out to touch her hip.

“What about all the reasons not to?” She asked. “What about how you’ll run off without telling me and jump on the back of a moving train or go running head first into some hostage situation?  You can ditch Scully your work partner, but…”

He was nodding. “Hmm,” he said.  “But I can’t ditch Scully my girlfriend?”

She blushed. “Well…”

He tugged her toward him and she slid even further into his personal space. Their torsos were almost touching. She could feel her own blood with every heartbeat. “Are you asking me if I’m going to screw this up?”

She frowned. “I didn’t really mean it like that.”

Mulder dipped his head toward her to press a kiss to her temple. “It’s not a bad question—one I’ve asked myself a few times.” Another kiss, closer to her ear this time, and she was beginning to not care as much about the answer. But he pulled back and looked her in the eye. “I don’t deserve how good you are.”

The words rubbed her wrong, and she felt her nerves rise again. “That can’t be an excuse.”

She watched the look on his face falter as he took in the meaning of her words, realized what he’d really said. “I know.”

There was a pause while she bit her lip and watched the soap bubbles in the sink slowly pop and disappear. “And it isn’t true.” She looked up at him again, at the vulnerable crease between his eyebrows, the way his lower lip stuck out in worry. “You deserve to be happy,” she said. “You deserve to have the things you want. I just meant that I want you to be sure that’s what this is.”

“What this is?” He asked, confused.

“That it’s what you really want.”

She watched him come to understand, watched disbelief cross his face first and then a smile come onto his lips. He shook his head. “A year ago… hell, a month ago, I couldn’t have told you for sure what I really wanted. But that’s only because I wouldn’t let myself see. Scully, you need to know… this has always been what I wanted. Always. Since before I even knew it. Maybe since before I met you.” He raised his hand to her cheek and she let her eyes fall closed at the feel of his skin on hers. She turned her head to press her lips to the heel of his palm. HIs mouth came down near her ear again. “This has been here all along, Scully. Waiting for us to catch up to it. Nothing in my life has ever felt as right.”

She nodded, knowing it was true and wanting to let herself finally believe. “I know,” she whispered, and opened her eyes to find his watching her with such intensity. Her Mulder. God, she loved him. The feeling was suddenly overwhelming. “I’ve never… It felt so right, Mulder.”

He studied her, then tugged her the final inches to press against his body that was warm and solid and smelled so good. She slipped her arms around his neck. “Let me show you how real it is,” he said and lowered his forehead to hers. “You can still call me crazy, Scully. You’ll still try to prove me wrong. But if I have this,” and he kissed her on the nose, then between her eyebrows, and she let out a little choking laugh. “I won’t want to jump onto moving trains anymore.”

Her eyebrow went up. “Are you saying I’ll suddenly inspire caution?”

He grinned. “Well. Some.”

“Hmm,” she said, pressing her hips closer to his. “Do you think right now, though, that we could be a little less cautious?”

She felt the effect of her pressing against him. He growled and lowered his lips to hers. “Definitely,” he said into her mouth, and then he was kissing her with all the anticipation of the past two days, all of his need to show her what he felt. Scully pressed her own love into his mouth, into his skin with her hands in his hair and her finger slipping behind his ears, holding his stubbled-scratchy jaw. She didn’t say the words yet, but tried to make him feel them. _I love you_ , she thought,  _IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou_. He accepted it all, and gave back in turn, and soon he was dragging her toward the hallway, scooting their bodies eastward while still holding them tightly together. She was laughing and pulling at the hem of his shirt and trying not to stop touching him as they moved.

In her bedroom, he unbuttoned her top while her fingers wrapped around his forearms and they watched each other with lust-heavy eyes. Her breathing was short and quick. He pushed the shirt down her arms before she did the same for him. Their clothes came of piece-by-piece like this, one at a time while they looked at each other. It was nothing like the wild crashing and coming together of their first time, when they’d been worked up from a day in the sun, when the slow build of the past six years had ramped suddenly to a frenzied tension that crashed and crumbled around them.

Scully slipped her right index finger into the waistband of his boxers and dragged it along the hem, feeling the heat of him grow until she encountered smooth hair and then the hot weight of his erection against her knuckle. He made a soft sound in the back of his throat. She let her finger slide up his length, and the sound came again, more insistent. A second finger joined the first, then her whole hand, moving slowly to hold him, to just squeeze gently and feel his warmth. He groaned.

Mulder unhooked her bra and pulled it off so her breasts felt free and heavy in the warm air of the bedroom. She arched her back into the sensation, lifting them toward him. “Beautiful,” he said, sliding one hand to cup her left breast while the other went to the curve of her hip, pulling her toward him so he could kiss her again. She stroked gently while he gripped and rubbed and tweaked each of her breasts, making her moan and lift her knee to his hip. His right hand, warm and just a little rough, scooted the length of her torso to slide under her own panties, and he gasped at how wet he found her. “Oh my god, Scully.” His middle finger slipped along the wet seam of her, explored, made her buck against him. Then, with a bold insistence, it delved inside her and she whimpered a slow “ohhh.” He kissed her neck where it met her shoulder and she almost came right there and then.

“Mulder.” It was a statement: an acknowledgement and an encouragement and a reassurance. Her hand moved over him at the same rhythm he set with his finger inside her and she realized they were both still wearing underwear and standing five feet from her bed but already they were moments from making each other come. His hips jerked first toward, and then away from her, and he slowed his hand. So did she. He kissed her cheek.

“Slower,” he said, and she nodded.

Still, he pushed her underwear down and then off, and then his own boxers, and he walked them both to the bed where he pulled her down to lay across the comforter with him, skin to skin. Their whole bodies touched along their lengths. She watched his eyes grow dark with want and his lips turn up at the sight of her watching him. When his arms came around her, it was like she was inside him, like they were fused and buzzing along every inch of touching flesh. His cock lay warm and heavy between them, pressed to the soft skin of her belly, so she pushed against it with her hips, felt him push back in turn; she murmured “hmmm.” She rubbed her nose against his chest, kissed the place above his heart, and found she couldn’t help herself from saying it: “I love you so much, Mulder.”

And then they both grew still at the revelation. It had come unbidden, but not unconsidered—had been true for years, but always pressed down below the line of verbal acknowledgement. When he didn’t respond right away, she began to worry, the room’s quiet feeding her always-primed seeds of self-doubt where Mulder was concerned. She swallowed. His fingers had stopped on her hip and her shoulder. For a moment, his chest movements halted with his breath—a dizzying minute in which she held her own breath, too. And then he crushed her to him, squeezed her whole body against his and kissed her head. “Oh, Scully Scully Scully. God.” His palm swiped between her shoulder blades, down her back to touch on the swell of her hip. He leaned back only enough to tilt her face up, to trace her cheekbones with his thumbs, and she swore his eyes looked wet.

“Did I say it too soon?” She asked.

He shook his head, laughing. “No. Never.” He was kissing her again, his hand slipping between them, fingers drawing a line along the length of her thighs where they touched, up up from her knees toward the small tuft of hair, as his tongue slipped between her lips. She lifted her knee, kissed him back, and felt herself flushing hot all over. His mouth moved to her jaw, to her ear to nip the lobe and he whispered, so soft, “I love you, Dana Scully.”

She wasn’t prepared for how it felt to hear him say it. It was like she had too much blood, too many nerves, and they were all squeezing her, all lighting her on fire. “I love you,” she whispered again into his own ear, and he said it back a second time, too. They passed the words between them, back and forth, over and over, while lips also traversed a landscape of skin that tightened and hardened and swelled and pebbled under brave explorer tongues.

When he pushed inside her, he said it again, and she couldn’t believe this was only the second time they’d done this. She gripped his hips with her knees and his face between her palms, fingertips in his soft, sweaty hair. “Always,” she said. “Always. I always will,” she said before she couldn’t speak any further words because then they were speaking another kind of language.

—

After, when they’d found their way under the covers, Mulder trailed his knuckles along her arm from bare shoulder to elbow, eyes on her hair that spilled across his chest, watching the rise and fall of her breathing.  _This is us together_ , he thought.  _This is real_. This thing between them was rendered true by more than just intent and purpose, more than just a determined second coupling. It felt cosmic, bound to the moving stars and clockwork of the universe, cemented in some great history of forever. He was waxing poetic, he realized, like any good lovestruck fool. He kissed the top of her head and pulled the blanket tighter. He’d promised her twice before work tomorrow; they should rest.

“Good night, Scully,” he said into her hair.

She took an extra deep breath and let it out with a “Hmmm g’night, Mulder.” He loved especially how easily she fell asleep in his presence. He thought how she must feel safe, and it made him smile.

He reached out a reluctant arm to switch off the bedside lamp.

The room fell dark, and they both slept quiet until morning.


End file.
